Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 18:08:25 -0600 From: Joe Halpin <joe.halpin@attbi.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: C vs C++ Message-ID: <3C86AF79.29D71F9C@attbi.com> References: <3C8529DA.FA8ABCE@mindspring.com> <20020305164151.T5854-100000@alpha.yumyumyum.org> <15493.24457.986109.726909@caddis.yogotech.com> <3C8573B2.35144B17@attbi.com> <200203051407.g25E7Cd67446@bugz.infotecs.ru> <001201c1c464$06416fd0$f642d9cf@DROID> <15493.49014.254461.125446@guru.mired.org> <3C8686E6.F76B8B56@attbi.com> <15494.42985.820103.310309@guru.mired.org>
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Mike Meyer wrote: > > Joe Halpin <joe.halpin@attbi.com> types: > > Mike Meyer wrote: > > > Joe Halpin <joe.halpin@attbi.com> types: > > > > 1. C++ is a more difficult language than C because it does more stuff > > > > than C. Ditto vs Java. > > > No, it doesn't do more stuff than C, Neither does Java. See the > > > Church-Turing thesis. Java and C++ are harder to learn because they > > > have more *features* than C. > > Sorry, I thought "had more features" was something like "did more". > > I don't see it that way. more in a bit. > > > For example, assembly language doesn't do anything Python can't, but > > Python does more (at least, per statement) than assembly language. > > That depends on the statements in question, the assembler, and the > coding style of the two programmers. Ok, let me be tedious about it. In general, higher level languages do more per statement than lowever level languages. There may be some set of assembly language statements that are directly comparable with some set of some higher level language statements, but I don't believe that's true in general. > > I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you trying to say that all > > Turing complete languages are equally difficult? > > No, I'm saying that all turing complete languages can do the same set > of things. I agreed with that. > If you want to divide languages up into levels in some > manner, it makes more sense to talk about "features". For example, > LISP-like languages have closures. OO languages can emulate them with > callable objects. To do either in C, you pretty much have to write an > interpreter for a language to do it - but you can still do it. I think I agreed with that too. > They thing is, those two features don't make the languages more > difficult; they make them less difficult, because you they allow you > to do things easily that would be very hard in C. In at least one case > - Scheme - features get added by removing restriction rather than > adding language constructs. That means that there is less to learn > about the language, even though it has more features. Experienced > programmes have problems with it because they have to unlearn things > they thought were invariants across languages. I think that was my point about C++. Maybe we're just not communicating, it's happened before with me. Joe To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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